


paris syndrome

by celoica



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Declarations Of Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Piercings, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:52:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15984104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celoica/pseuds/celoica
Summary: Steve had never been his friend. A challenge to accept, maybe. A mountain to climb, sure. Never a friend. Steve hadn’t wanted Billy like that, or at all.But Steve wasn’t Steve Harrington, Golden Son of Hawkins High, in Amsterdam or Ghent or Compiègne or a hotel room in Paris. He was just Steve, the one with a sick sense of humour and a hollow look in his eye, the one who swallowed little white capsules every morning from a bottle with lithium scratched off the label. He was just Steve, the guy who pushed Billy into bed every night, sucked his cock in a train bathroom and fucked him over the edge of a fountain in the middle of the day.For seven months.Seven months.





	paris syndrome

_I don’t want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it._

— Georges Bataille, from “My Mother, Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man”

 

 

 

 

“I’ve never been in love before this,” Billy admitted.

Steve glanced at him, rolling the stub of the cigarette between his fingers. His hair was a mess, flat on one side, curled awkwardly on the other. The red mark, teeth-shaped, stood out against his pale skin, left of the cluster of freckles dusting his right pec.

He looked beautiful. In the morning light, eyes still creased with sleep, mouth red from biting and standing at the foot of their bed. He looked so beautiful it hurt, right down to the jagged pieces of his heart, to the bottomless well of want he’d built when he’d been seventeen, a shrine dedicated to boys with brown hair and a weak right hook.

“You keep saying that to me,” Steve said, finally, and his eyes drifted around the room. Billy wanted to grab him with both hands and force him to look when he spoke. “This whole time and you keep  _saying it_.”

Crushing the filter in his palm, Steve turned away, tossing it into the trashcan and picking up his pack of cigarettes.

“You’re the one being a fucking coward.”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, swinging around from the balcony with fury in his eyes, bright and sharp, the kind of anger Billy was achingly familiar with.

He watched, passively from his tangle of sheets on the bed, and shrugged. “I call ‘em like I see ‘em.” He smiled, all teeth. “Coward.”

Steve’s fists clenched, tight balls at his sides, face pinched up in anger, and then he turned away again, rooting through his cigarette pack. There was a twitch in his shoulders as he moved, like his body had been strung up, like he was struggling against something great.

They’d met in a coffee shop in Amsterdam, Steve high off his ass and Billy looking for a caffeine fix to cure the hangover from the night before. There had been idly, bleary-eyed chitchat, an awkward exchange of  _I didn’t I’d ever see you here_  and then they’d been drinking black with sugar and strolling down the cobblestone street like friends.

Old friends. Friends who knew secrets from each other’s histories, like who they’d kissed first, the first time they’d tried pot and stolen their dad’s car for a joyride at two in the morning.

Steve had never been his friend. A challenge to accept, maybe. A mountain to climb, sure. Never a friend. Steve hadn’t wanted Billy like that, or at all.

But Steve wasn’t Steve Harrington, Golden Son of Hawkins High, in Amsterdam or Ghent or Compiègne or a hotel room in Paris. He was just Steve, the one with a sick sense of humour and a hollow look in his eye, the one who swallowed little white capsules every morning from a bottle with lithium scratched off the label. He was just Steve, the guy who pushed Billy into bed every night, sucked his cock in a train bathroom and fucked him over the edge of a fountain in the middle of the day.

For seven months.

_Seven months_.

Billy sat up, pushing the sheets to the side and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He stood.  “You can’t actually run away from me,” he said. “I’m faster.”

Steve snorted, resting his folded arms on the balcony railing. He bent down, resting his chin on his folded arms. His back arched, spine moving beneath his skin, hips pushing out. There was a bruise in the shape of Billy’s thumb on his hip. He’d squirmed so much, whining on Billy’s cock while he’d pushed his hips up, desperate against the grip Billy had held on his waist, pinned to the bed, and Billy hadn’t been able to help squeezing until his own fingers had hurt.

“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t really care.” Steve flicked his cigarette. Billy reached for the pack, set precariously on the railing. Swiping his own cigarette, he said, “You know I love you. I keep saying it for a reason.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“You love me, too, you know,” he said mildly, lighting the cigarette. “And you fucking know it. You can’t just shut me up with your dick whenever I say it. That’s gonna stop working eventually.”

Steve glanced at him. His mouth twitched. “Are you saying it hasn’t stopped yet?”

“It might, depending on how this conversation goes.”

He sighed, mouth curving down in a frown. “You’re asking a lot from me.”

“I haven’t asked fuck-all from you this whole time.”

Steve cut him a snide look. “That doesn’t make this a lot.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So,” Billy said, resting his hip against the railing, “are you going to tell me you love me? What about the fucking pills? Or, hey, maybe you can tell me what you were doing with Max that night.”

Steve was silent. He pulled off three drags from his cigarette before he spoke. Billy barely enjoyed his own.

“That was eight years ago.”

“I know. I remember. Never got an answer from her about it.” He glanced out over the city. The world had been awake for hours, the city highlights by the clear stretch of blue sky. Below them, the city rumbled with life, with filthy glory.

“She hates you.”

“Oh, still?”

“I don’t know. Last time I saw her she did.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “She’s a drama queen. Stop changing the subject.”

“You saw right through me,” Steve said blandly. He ran a hand through his hair, head tipped back. The sunlight caught the strands of gold in his hair. His eyes closed, mouth a grim line. “She told me, you know. After you left Hawkins. She was drunk and kept crying about Neil.” He huffed on a laugh, but the humour fell flat. He opened his eyes and turned them on Billy, unwavering.  “He got arrested, y’know. Only, like, six months, but it was something.”

“Good,” Billy said, blunt, immediate, sucking on his cigarette until his lungs burned bright white pain. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Steve watched him, hawkish and shrewd, hunting Billy’s face like prey. Billy lifted an eyebrow as he blew smoke from his nose. Steve looked away sharply.

“You’re crap at manipulation.”

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face, and Billy watched his face scrunch up, eyes screwed shut and mouth twisted. It was going about as well as Billy had expected the conversation to go.

“Don’t be an asshole. This is  _hard_  for me.”

“Being loved must be such a drag.”

“By you? Yeah.”

It stung. It burned all the way to the bottomless well and the place that he had cracked open for Steve to fit into. Like pulling out his own teeth, like cutting his hair, like sewing up his own wounds. Like Steve had torn off a scab, one that played the iceberg and had grown roots all the way down to his heart.

He sneered. “You can leave if you fucking want. I’m not stopping you. No one’s fucking stopping you.”

Steve looked him over, mouth quirked. Billy wanted to hit him, take him down a notch or seven. Drag him onto the floor and tear lines into his body, bury himself so deep inside Steve’s skin he couldn’t shake him off when they were done.

The weight of Steve’s gaze was unbearable. Suffocating, landing hard on his throat. Billy looked away, teeth clenched. The city below looked up, cars glinting by in a wink. It mocked him.

“I love you, too.”

Relief swept over him, a tidal wave of dammed feelings he’d carefully patched back behind a wall rushing over him. It was icy-hot. He felt it in his spine, the hollow of his back. It felt like the worst pain, more damaging than the blows Neil had landed on him, and the sweetest pleasure, almost as good as Steve’s bitten off moans in his ear when Billy had three fingers in him in a dirty club bathroom.

“That wasn’t so hard to say, was it?” But his voice betrayed him—a tremor, a slight quiver in the words. Relief turned to exhaustion, harder than any hit he’d taken.

“It was,” Steve said. He wouldn’t look at Billy.

“You love me, I love you. It’s simple.”

“What about when I go home?”

“Your visa’s been up for months, Steve. Don’t bullshit me.”

A little half-smile twitched on Steve’s mouth. He stood up straight and reached for the cigarette in Billy’s hand, pulling off the last few drags and tossing it down to the ground below. “So is yours.”

“No, it’s not.” Steve frowned, eyebrows knitting together, and Billy said, “I live here.”

“…in Europe?”

He grinned. “In France.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“I was born here.”

Steve squinted, running a hand through his hair, gaze swinging from Billy’s face to the tower in the distance. His mouth worked on words that didn’t come out. He sighed. “I just thought you were really good at French.”

Billy laughed. “I am.”

“How’d you get born here?”

“Well, Steve,” he said, turning to lean the small of his back against the railing, “when a man and woman love each other very much—”

“Dickhead,” Steve said, biting back a grin. “How’d you end up in fucking Indiana?”

“I was in California first.”

“You’re evading.”

“Big word, little man.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Steve said, not unkindly, and nudged his elbow against Billy’s ribs. It was the first time he’d touched him since he’d woken up and rolled out of bed. It felt like electricity beneath his skin, lingering on the small patch Steve had touched. “Just answer the question.”

Billy tipped his head back, the sun warming his face. He closed his eyes. There was still spunk below his belly button, leftover from a hasty clean up from the night before. “Neil’s not my real dad. My mom said he died before I was born, but I think that’s probably bullshit. They got married when I was eight and then we moved.”

“That’s…a lot.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re  _French_. You don’t even  _sound_  French.”

“Kids are mean,” Billy said, dismissive. “I lost the accent fast.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Cracking an eye open, he cast an amused look at Steve. He was staring, openly, attention unwaveringly on Billy. It warmed him more than the sun. “Do you wanna see my passport?” he asked. “I thought you would’ve by now.”

Steve studied him for a long moment and then shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“Would you believe it if I took you to meet my grandparents?” Billy asked, in French, just because he could.

“I don’t know what the fuck you just said.”

Billy threw his head back and laughed, light, joyful. “I’ll take you to my home. You can see where I grew up.”

“And meet your mom?”

“Graveyards aren’t very romantic.”

Steve flinched. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Why? Did you kill her?”

“Well, no—”

“Then don’t be sorry.”

Silence drifted between them.

“Did I just fuck this up?” Steve asked, quiet.

“My mom’s been dead for fifteen years, Steve,” he said, and it was gentle, like he was placating a frightened animal. Fifteen years in the absence of tenderness, and he still managed to scrape enough together when he was speaking to Steve. “You couldn’t fuck that up if you tried.”

Licking his lips, Steve turned, hip resting on the railing. He crossed his arms over his chest. There was an inch of space between them. It felt like miles. “If I told you monsters were real, would you believe me?”

“What kind of monsters?”

“Like  _Alien_.”

“Is this supposed to be a joke?”

Steve shook his head. “I can show you, if you go back. To Hawkins. I know you haven’t been back, but it’s…it’s there. I can show you. There’s so much shit you just don’t know.”

Billy was quiet. He glanced back where Steve’s duffle bag, clothes hanging haphazardly from the zipper, lay on the floor. There was a stash of little orange-tinted bottles with picked off labels. Generic brand lithium, Clozaril, Prozac, and Xanax Billy had never actually seen him take.

He’d snooped. They’d spent three weeks lounging in Amsterdam, Billy’s arm roped around his waist like an anchor, drinking and fucking and site-seeing, renting two hostel beds until Steve had bought a bottle of lube and condoms with their water and gum and they’d split the difference for an even shittier motel room.

It had been worth it. Everything had been worth it, even when he’d snooped while Steve had slept soundly in their shared bed.

He wasn’t stupid. Billy was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

“Have you been taking your meds?” he asked, point blank, and he hoped to whatever the fuck was hanging around in the clouds above them he didn’t sound as concerned as he felt.

Steve’s face dropped. There was anger there, simmering, and then he deflated, shoulders slumping. “You don’t believe me.”

“Delusions are—”

“I know what fucking delusions are,” Steve snapped, harder, eyes like broken glass as he turned a glare on Billy. “You weren’t even there. You don’t get to say fucking  _shit_  to me about that.”

“You never shared,” Billy said, bite in his words, an anxious churn in his belly that hollowed out his chest. “I’m not fucking stupid, man.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“You won’t tell me.”

“You wouldn’t believe me!”

“You just said monsters are fucking real! Like _Alien_  shit!”

“Because they  _are_!”

“Don’t you think the whole world would know about that?”

“You think the government doesn’t fucking know? Who do you think gagged us?”

“Now the government’s in on it, too?” Billy asked. “Did men in black suits follow you around? Maybe make you sign something? Threaten you?”

Steve’s spine went rigid, posture straighter than a soldier’s. His mouth trembled, eyes hard. He looked like he was about to cry.

“I get that I’m fucking sick, man, okay? I know that. I’m not  _stupid_. And, yeah, okay, I started hearing some shit and went a little fucking crazy. And, yeah, okay,” he said, sounding so wrecked Billy wanted to hold him, curl around him until he calmed down and keep him safe from the world, “I thought the gate was open again and everyone went a little nuts for a couple weeks trying to figure it out, but I’m not fucking  _making it up_. It happened.”

“None of that makes any sense, Steve.”

“Neither does you being French.”

“That’s not the same.”

Steve looked away, head jerked toward the city, eyes set low. “I’m not making it up,” he said again, pain tingeing his words.

Agony. Desperation. Billy knew it well.

He swallowed. “I don’t believe you.”

“You can love me but you can’t believe me?”

“You got antipsychotics in your fucking bag, Steve, and you’re trying to tell me aliens are real?”

“Not  _aliens_ ,” Steve said, fire sparking back up in his voice, a hint of exasperation. “Just…shit like aliens. The things that go in your chest and rip you apart from the inside out. They look like slugs and then they grow. Like dogs, man. They look like dogs with Venus flytrap mouths and they smell like rot and death and just—”

He cut himself off, jerking away from the railing, moving into the room. Billy followed, frown so deep it felt like a knife had etched it onto his mouth.

“Where are you going?” he asked when Steve grabbed his wallet off the dresser and snatched a pair of jeans off the floor.

“Out,” he said, yanking on his jeans with brutal efficiency. The tattoos on his thighs and hips and legs disappeared, bright splashes of colour and bold black lines disappearing beneath denim. “Somewhere. I don’t know.” He dragged hand through his hair, gripping the ends and tugging. He laughed. It was hollow. “You don’t fucking believe me. You can love me but you don’t believe me? It’s bullshit.”

“Do you know how cra—”

Steve laughed. It was vicious. Billy stared.

“Crazy? Coming from you? That’s fucking rich,” he said, and shoved his wallet violently into his back pocket.

“That’s not what I—”

“If you didn’t mean it, you wouldn’t have said it.”

“Oh, don’t pull that grade-school bullshit on me.”

Steve’s shoulders shook, a heavy tremour rippling through his body, and he laughed. Billy flinched like he’d been hit.

“Fine,” Steve said, simple and concise, a neat package of his hurricane emotions presented with a bow and an underlying  _go fuck yourself._

Billy took a step forward. “Steve—”

Steve jerked a hand up, fingers spread. “I said  _fine_ ,” he said, and bent down, grabbing a bottle from his bag and standing. He jammed it into his back pocket and turned.

As the door swung shut with a gentle click, Billy called out, “You’re still a fucking coward!”

 

 

 

He showered and dressed, taming his hair into submission with Steve’s mousse. While he brushed his teeth, he thought about Steve’s bag, the bottles rattling around since Amsterdam. He’d never asked where he got them filled. The bottles seemed to refill themselves around the sixth of the month, and Billy forgot about them until he Steve swallowed down a handful of them while they drank coffee in bed, promptly distracting himself ink painted on the insides of Steve’s thighs.

Spitting and setting his toothbrush down, he went to Steve’s bag, on his knees, rooting inside until he came up with three bottles. Carefully, Billy spilled them onto the bed, counting out pill by pill, and did the math between the date on the bottle and the number left in piles.

Pills carefully counted back into their bottles and tucked into Steve’s bag, Billy stood, looking around their room. It didn’t hold any answers between the clothes left on the floor, the ashtray beside the bed, the wine glasses knocked over that promised he wasn’t going to see the deposit back.

Steve was crazy. Billy had known that already. He’d known since the first time he’d dragged him into a filthy public bathroom and bit his neck until he moaned. He’d known it since he’d taken notice of the pills, the way Steve took them in the morning so he wouldn’t mix with what they did at night.

Point was: Billy had known that already.

Being face-to-face with it was different. It was like facing down the edge of the world, with a monster made of talons, fangs and the skin of the man he loved breathing down his neck.

_I love you, too_.

He laughed, alone in their hotel room in the city of love. Steve loved him. At least there was that.

 

 

 

 

After swiping a spare key from the front desk, Billy took the metro to the Latin Quarter. He drank coffee and ate salade niçoise on the busy street, watching families, harried office workers and oblivious tourists wander down the street.

A group of German girls stopped at his table, smiled and asked him for directions, and one lingered behind with intent, snatching paper from a nearby waiter and hastily writing down a hotel name and suggesting drinks later that day. Billy left it on the table.

He walked the Quarter. As a child, he’d done the same, holidays with his mother, running wild in the streets of Paris with scabbed knees and a lightness he hadn’t felt since then. She had held his hand, tight, called him William when he bumped into people with all the energy of barely-contained hurricane.

Steve had wanted to see the Quarter. He’d wanted to see all the American-friendly parts of Paris. The Eiffel Tower was crowded, the Fontaine Saint-Michel shit-covered and the Lourve was so mind-numbingly  _dull_  Billy had started betting on whether or not he could convince Steve to fuck in the washroom when Steve had brought up Paris.

But he’d gone, because Steve had wanted to go and Billy just wanted to see him happy.

Figuring it out hadn’t been that hard. He knew love in the way everyone did—on movie and TV screens, with grand gestures and the kind of desire that won awards. It was a thing that took root inside people like a weed, made them do downright stupid fucking things like pick flowers and sigh wistfully into the night.

He didn’t sigh or moon or walk into walls because his head was jammed in the clouds. They’d laid on a beach in Blåvandshuk, sand sticking to their bare legs and coating the stretched out blanket beneath, naked, making the closest guess to love Billy had ever felt, until he’d thought  _oh, this is love_.

The next morning he had panicked, biting and rude and as cruel as he could get, and then fallen in love all over again when Steve had dragged into the ocean with a kiss.

It was easy because Steve hadn’t known, and then Billy hadn’t been sure if he should say anything.  They’d been busy trading kisses and stories of scars and ink, the knotted white skin of Billy’s face and the splashes of blue and red on Steve’s. They’d been busy in a cabin outside of Braine-l'Alleud, where they grew wiry breads that scratched each other’s thighs and cheeks.

They’d been busy until they weren’t, and by then Billy had only been waiting for Steve.

He stopped in front of the Fontaine Saint-Michel, between the two dragons vomiting water into the fountain. They were coated in a dripping layer of bird shit, too. Billy wondered if Steve would still find it cool.

Dark grey clouds billowed over the city in the distance, dragged across the Quarter by the wind. Billy made it back to the metro as fat raindrops bled onto the stone, darkening ground to mirror the sky.

 

 

 

The door unlocked with a  _click_  and Steve slipped into the room.

Billy paused, clutching the balled shirt he held in his hands. It was pouring outside, pissing down rain mixed with that certain kind of wind that had you struggling to stand upright.

Steve dripped onto the carpet, hair slicked into his face, clothes waterlogged. The delicate lines of ink stretching across his throat into a design Billy had memorized with his tongue peeked out from his soaked shirt.

He stared at Billy. Billy stared back.                                       

“You hungry?” Billy asked, turning away from him.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Be like what?”

“You know what.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy said, sniffing as he yanked his shirt on, running a hand through his damp hair. He sat down on the edge of the bed, the chill biting at his fingers and toes, and looked at Steve.

He stood next to the door, twisted into the hem of his shirt, wringing water into the carpet. He looked pale, the blue spider web of veins standing prominent along his jaw. A fat drop of water rolled through his eyebrow and into his eyelash.

Steve licked his lips, pushed the water out of his eye. “Don’t be like that,” he said again, a croak in his voice.

“You’re the one who ran out.”

“You called me  _crazy_.”

Maybe it was better this way, Billy thought, plucking at the edge of a blanket. Maybe it was better that they never went anywhere, that Steve would go home to America and forget about it. Maybe it was better if Billy went home, too, back to Montélimar, get a job at his uncle’s shop like he was supposed to.

Maybe it was better that they ended in now, here. It would be fitting.

Billy shrugged, looking down at the blanket. He smoothed away the wrinkles with his palm.

Steve moved, hovering next to him, a hand raised like he was going to touch him. Maybe punch him. Maybe grab his hair and shove him onto his knees, pushing him into a position that was more familiar, less awkward.

His hand dropped.

Billy sighed. “Are you leaving now?” He curled his hands into his lap, cutting Steve a glance. It was hard when he stood and Billy sat, looking up at him. He felt caught, defeated, like the devil beneath Michael. “You can leave, if you want. I can’t stop you.”

“I’m not trying to leave.”

Billy scoffed. “I’m not stupid.”

“No,” Steve said, and he sighed, so heavy Billy could feel it released from his own chest, “you’re not. I just forget you weren’t there.”

“For the aliens?”

“They’re not aliens,” Steve said, making a face. “They’re interdimensional predators.”

Billy made a face right back at him.

Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s complicated.”

“Your pills aren’t working,” Billy said bluntly. “You’ve cracked.”

“That was five years ago, Billy. You’d know if I cracked.”

“Then what’s this?” he asked. Whatever heat he’d gathered withered on the second word. He felt drained, exhausted. Looking at Steve was exhausting. It hurt his heart.

“Could you,” Steve said, dripping onto the bed as he leaned down, resting a hand beside Billy, “for even a second, consider I might be telling the truth?”

 “You’re getting the bed wet,” he muttered, looking away.

“For a second, Billy. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Why should I?”

“I know what your first time was like.”

Billy flinched, jerking away from Steve. Horrified, he looked at him, hands balled into fists on his thighs. It was one of those things Billy labeled  _do not touch_  and sat on a shelf, careful not to look too long.

He’d never told Steve. He was never going to tell Steve.

“You don’t,” Billy insisted, because he didn’t, but dread was thickening in his chest, a sinking feeling in the pit of his belly.

Steve leaned in closer, suddenly ten feet tall and taking up too much oxygen in the room. “I do, Billy,” he said, earnest and open, the kind of raw vulnerability Billy had desperately craved since Ghent. He’d wanted to lick into Steve once. He’d wanted to rip open a wound big enough for Billy to fit himself into Steve’s skin and stay there.

“I know his face,” Steve continued, and Billy’s brain lagged behind every second word, “and his fucking hair and his fucking hands on you. I know what he tasted like. Like grease and Mores.  _Fuck_ ,” Steve swore, hand coming up between them, clenched in a gnarled grip on nothing, “I wanted to kill him. I can still see his license plate and the picture on the dash—”

He shoved him away, violent, careless, and stood, crossing the room in five quick strides. His stomach roiled, bitter acid on the back of his tongue. His skin itched. He’d crawl out of it if he could, pick at his own seams with a knife until he didn’t have to be inside himself anymore.

He closed his eyes and counted back from five.

“Billy?”

“How do you know.” Flat, barely a question.

“Jane thinks it has something to do with transference. The science is pretty fucking dodgy, but we had to go back in. The Mind Flayer wouldn’t let her go, and Will didn’t want to leave her there—no one wanted to leave her there—but we had to get inside her head to do it. She’s stronger in the Upside Down. We thought we’d be stronger, too, and you can build a deprivation tank out of anything—”

“Steve,” Billy said, quiet, pained. He stared at the wall.

He could hear Steve swallow from across the room. “We all came back wrong. Even—even Max. I mean,” he said with a breathless, hollow laugh, “Billy, c’mon. The sex is good because I let you in my head. I get into yours. You feel what I’m feeling.”

“You know what I’m thinking. You know what I know.”

“Yeah, it’s—”

“ _Stop_ ,” Billy gritted out. “Stop talking. Shut the fuck up for now.”

He breathed through his nose. He counted back from ten and then twenty. He was silent, staring at the wall, following the faded floral pattern until he could remember how to use his tongue.

“You know everything?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Shit, I didn’t know you were French, so obviously not. Just the—the shit that you’re thinking when we touch.”

_But we touch a lot_ , he didn’t say, but he didn’t need to for Billy to hear it.

Voice quiet, a hushed whisper that felt like digging out his own nerves, he asked, “When I fell in love with you? You knew?”

Steve didn’t answer. Billy turned to look at him, desperate, a crater the size of California in his chest. “Did you?” he asked. “Did you know?”

Steve sat on the edge of the bed. He sniffed, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand, and then—the fucking  _coward_ —looked away, muttering just loud enough for Billy to hear if he strained, “Not the exact moment. I have to be touching you.”

It was a slap to the face. Not a backhanded pussy slap. Full force, open handed, leaving his ears ringing and his sinuses aching. Betrayal leaked into his veins. The last time he’d felt so consumed by his own feelings he’d been seven and flustered, fingers bleeding from where he’d tried desperately to pick up the shattered glass on the floor, Neil’s fingers a bruising band around his arm.

It felt like every time after that. Like every bad decision; every scuff and cut and bruise, the broken fingers and burn scars on his palm.

“I hate you. I hate you so fucking  _much_.”

How could you do this to me. Why did you do this to me. Why did you do this to us.

They ran loops around Billy’s head until it ached, until he felt the bright-sharp prick of tears in his eyes. He scrubbed them away, flinching away as Steve got up, reaching for him.

“Don’t touch me.” His eyes stung, blotchy blobs dancing in his vision. He blinked away the feeling, skin too tight to his bones. “You’re so fucked up, Harrington. What the fuck is  _wrong_  with you?”

Steve opened his mouth, tongue lifting, and then closed it, lips pressed into a thin line. Billy waited, expectant, the pit growing in his chest.  

How much did he know? Did he know about losing himself in Barcelona? Did he know about the first day of kindergarten, stumbling through a language he didn’t want to speak? Did he know about the day Neil had caught him with cigarettes, pressed the cherry into his palm until he’d sobbed for mercy?

Did he know he’d cried when he’d seen Steve’s face? Did he know he’d felt sick all day? Did he know he’d crawled into his bed that night, achingly hollow, trying to find a scrap of humanity left in himself?

_Did he know_  lopped around his skull, banging into every bad memory Billy could reach for.

Steve said nothing.

Open, exposed, Steve staring at him expectantly—it was a rewrite of the day after the Weirdo Jonathan’s house, with no classroom to hide in, no Camaro to escape in.  

“I’m gonna hit you if you don’t start talking,” he growled.

“I can leave,” Steve said in a rush of a breath, words blurring together. “I’ll go—it was a mistake, I know it was—I didn’t know how to tell you—”

“Steve.”

Steve paused. Quiet, he said, “I’ll leave.”

“You’re worse than a coward, you fucking know that? You’re worse. I don’t know what the fuck is worse than a coward, but you are the fucking  _definition_  of it!”

He was in front of Steve in four strides, pressed close. His hands came up, fingers curled and hovering.  _I have to be touching you_  echoed in his head. “If you leave,” Billy said, grit in his voice, “I will never forgive you. I’ll kick your fucking ass in the airport and then never see you again. You don’t get to say shit like this and then walk out. Got it?”

Steve nodded, Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat. “Okay.”

He stepped away, hands shaking and shoulders twitching with barely-restrained tension. He wanted to unwind, swing his fist until the skin of his knuckles split and he couldn’t feel anything but the pain. He could focus then, sort through the muddled thoughts dragging him down like quicksand, pick apart the story until he could make sense of it.

They stared each other down. . The rain battered against the windows, cutting through the silence. Steve’s eyes read guilty. Billy looked away first.

“Billy—” Steve cut himself off, sighing heavily. “I don’t know what to say.”

Billy rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, inhaling sharply. “Go shower. You’ll catch a cold and die.”

“Billy…”

“You know,” Billy said, a hysterical edge to his voice, “the more you say my name, the more I wanna hit you. Go. I can’t fucking look at you right now.”

Steve opened his mouth again and closed it again. He walked stiffly across the room to the bathroom, unzipping his waterlogged jacket. He threw it over the back of a chair and didn’t look back as he closed the door behind him.

Inside Billy’s chest, the hollow ache echoed louder.

 

 

 

 

Red faced and eyes smarting with tears he bit back, Billy smoked three cigarettes, lighting one up after the other, shivering in the three-by-three inch square of mostly-dry pavement beneath an awning. Harried guests shot him disgruntled looks from beneath umbrellas, hurrying into the hotel. The front desk agent looked up again, suspicious.

Lightheaded, he took the stairs up, carefully avoiding looking anyone in the eye. He fiddled with his key, stalling outside the door. There wasn’t enough Dutch courage in the world to lend him the bravery for whatever came out of Steve’s mouth.

He was a coward, too. He always had been.

Billy braced himself for impact and opened the door. Steve stood up from the table, chair scraping roughly on the carpet.  Hair damp, dressed in a pair of Billy’s sweats and one of the sweaters that had mysteriously appeared in their laundry in Munich, he held a cigarette between his fingers and a startled look on his face.

He said nothing as Billy shook off his jacket. He watched him, guarded, careful, as Billy sat himself across the table from him, reaching for the back of cigarettes despite the roll of his stomach.

He lit up, quiet, watching Steve stand there dumbly, stare at him like he’d grown a second head, seventeen-year-old mullet attached.

“You can sit,” Billy said, gesturing with his cigarette. His hands shook. Steve sat. “I’m gonna forgive you eventually,” he went on, rubbing his knuckles along his jaw. “That was pretty fucked up.”

Steve flicked his ashes and shrugged. “I know.”

“Then why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t know how to make you understand.”

“That wasn’t the way to do it.”

“You believe me, though, don’t you?”

Billy looked down. The ashtray had two chips in the glass. Maybe Steve had put them there. “I want to believe you’re not that much of an asshole.”

Steve stayed silent, and when Billy darted his eyes up, Steve was frowning at him, cigarette hanging an inch from his lips. “I’m not an asshole.”

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t  _lie_.”

“It was close enough. You didn’t need to bring th—that up.”

The crack in his voice was loud enough to echo in the room. He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, uncomfortable.

The look Steve gave him was closer to kicked puppy than tattooed mental case. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough, “I’m starting to see that now.”

They smoked their cigarettes in silence, Steve staring intently at Billy while Billy stared out the window. The rain had let up, a soft pattern of drops that lulled him. He wondered if it was raining in Indiana. He wondered if California air tasted the same.

He wondered what Steve was thinking. If he was angry at him still, for not believing. Part of him didn’t want to. Part of him wanted to throw his hands up and tell Steve to get some help, that the pills rattling around in his bag weren’t enough. Part of him wanted to fall to his knees and cry, because Steve  _knew_. He knew things Billy hadn’t told a soul, knew the parts of himself that he kept hidden because his not-boyfriend was fucking  _psychic_  and wasn’t that just Billy Hargrove’s life?

“Do you hate me?”

Billy glanced at him, snubbing out his cigarette in the tray. “Why do you think that?”

“You said it.”

“I don’t mean everything I say.”

“You usually do,” Steve said, dry, eyes down to where he was flicking at his cigarette with his finger. “You always call me on my bullshit.”

“Not your crazy.”

“Is that really my bullshit?”

Billy snorted. He dragged a hand down his face, fingertips pressed to his closed eyes until they ached. “No,” he admitted, finally, quietly. “It seemed off limits.”

“Like your dad.”

“That’s not off limits.”

“It seemed that way.”

“You were too much of a pussy to ask.”

Steve laughed. It sounded a little less hollow, a little less like he was teetering on the edge. “Maybe,” he said. “I didn’t know how to bring it up before. You were thinking about it—back in Amsterdam, in that shitty hostel, remember?—when I was touching your neck.” He paused, licked his lips, and Billy felt the urge to reach over and snatch his tongue from his mouth. “Max told me some shit. I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“That’s nice,” Billy said dismissively, with a hand gesture that could only be read as  _you fucking prick_. “I didn’t realize I was such a hot topic between you two. What happened? I get outta town and you get all buddy-buddy? Did she tell you before?” He smiled, tight, angry. “Did she tell you she watched it happen? How about when she did shit that she knew would get me in trouble? Or did you see that in her head, too?”

He pressed his heels into the plush carpet, solid to the ground, fingers curling and uncurling into his palm, squeezing them into fists until his nails cut into his palms. His head felt heavy with it, stale on his tongue.

It had been easier before Steve. No one knew him well enough to poke at his bruises.

Steve leaned back, eyes wary, careful, shoulders tense like he was ready to dodge a strike. “I saw some of it. I saw what you did to her. What he did to you. What he did to them.”

Billy closed his eyes and counted back from five, breathing through his nose. “That’s not my problem,” he said tightly.

“You could have—”

“Don’t finish that.”

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

“So you can tell me what I should’ve done to stop my old man from beating the shit out of everyone? Like it was  _my_  fault?”

“Jesus Christ, Billy.” He breathed the words, a rush of breath. “You really want to fight about this? That’s not what I meant.”

He opened his eyes and looked out the window. “Don’t bring it up, then.”

“It’s important.”

“If you want me to still fucking love you at the end of this, shut the hell up about it. I’m pissed. I wanna rip your head off for this,” he said, tired, exhausted, rage slipping from his blood like the tide. He looked at Steve and Steve looked back. “I don’t know if I’m gonna get the hell over it soon, so will you just shut up about Neil and Susan and fucking Max and  _be on my side_?”

It felt like begging, like desperation was pulling at his every edge. He wanted the Steve from the night before back. The one who hadn’t said I love you and talked about monsters and made him think he was going a little crazy, too. He wanted the one with his cock pierced and too many tattoos that didn’t make sense. He wanted the one who’d sling an arm over his side after sex, pull Billy close and kiss the back of his neck.

He wanted the one he didn’t question. He wanted the one he was sure of, the one he wasn’t scared to crawl into the lap of.

He sighed and unwound his fingers from their clenched fists, stretching them out until the ache subsided. “I get you’re friends with the brats or whatever—I don’t even remember them much anymore—but if you’re in love with me, you gotta be on my side for this. Right now, you gotta be on my side.”

“I didn’t know you were this chatty about your feelings.”

“You weren’t, either.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

Steve smiled, soft, distant. “The thing I was so scared of you knowing.”

Billy went quiet, glancing out the window. The rain had let up. Fat drops dripped down the window, slow. It was quiet beneath them, blurred lights dotting below. Serene and peaceful. Romantic, he supposed, if he were anyone else but Billy and Steve were anyone else but Steve.

“I love you,” he said, soft, when the quiet became unbearable. “I wake up thinking about you and every time you get fucked up on weed I think you’re perfect. I never thought I’d care about anyone enough to love them. Especially you. You drove me mental when we were kids.”

Steve made a noise of surprise and asked, “Were we ever kids?”

“Close enough, no?”

Steve chuckled, low and throaty. Billy wanted to lick it from his mouth. “I hated you back then.”

“I hated me, too,” Billy admitted, looking at Steve. “But I don’t anymore. Not for a long time. Just remember that. I won’t let anyone hurt me like that again. Even you.”

Steve stared, damp lips parted in surprise. “Okay,” he said, hoarse, nodding. “Ditto for me.”

“You’ve been in my head. You think I wanna hurt you?”

“You do sometimes,” Steve said. He reached across the table, knuckles grazing Billy’s fingertips. “Mostly when you’re choking me on your cock, but I can forgive you for that.”

The laughter broke through the icy surface Billy had wrapped around himself in the rain. It was armour, carefully constructed from the time he’d been twelve and realized no one was coming to rescue him. If he was colder than ice, he was safe. Hurt slid off ice, reflected off somewhere else. It was easy to melt around Steve.

He bit his lip, a moment of hesitation, and picked up Steve’s hand. His skin was warm, nicotine-stained, a little rough at the edges. Billy kissed his fingertips, tasted cigarettes and soap and Steve.  He wondered what his love felt like to Steve.

“Warm,” Steve murmured, eyes heavy as he nudged his fingers against Billy’s lip, thumb skimming the corner. “Like right before you crash down from being high. It’s like seeing clearly for the first time.”

Billy swallowed. His cheeks felt hot, burning, a twist in his belly. He wanted to punch Steve in the face.

“Like pulling on my pigtails,” Steve whispered, fingertips stroking over the bow of Billy’s lips, gentle. There was no hesitation in his touch, solid and real.

It was disconcerting. It shook him down to his core, the  _wrongness_  of someone else inside his head when he couldn’t feel them.

_What else do you know?_  Billy thought.

“All of it.” Steve’s mouth twitched, and he amended, “Most of it. Some of it. I don’t know.  What do you want me to know?”

Billy imagined what it would be like to never touch Steve again. He flinched away from everyone else, shooting down the casual touch of conversation with a disdainful look that could melt ice. Steve touched him with casual reverence, with the kind of possessive grip he held on only his cigarettes and backpack, and Billy let him because being touched by Steve was like being touched by God—inescapable and forgiving.

It hurt to think about a wall between them. He licked his lips, swallowed around the dryness in his throat.  _None of it. All of it._

“You don’t ask much.”

“What else can you do?” he asked aloud, against Steve’s fingertips. “I can’t feel you in my head.”

“Eleven taught me to put up a wall.”

“Eleven?”

Steve frowned, shifting to the edge of his seat to reach for Billy’s cheek. Billy pushed his hand away and stood, ignoring the hurt look on Steve’s face until he took his wrist, side-stepping the table and moving to the bed. He pulled Steve along, deliberate, and said, “I wanna touch you. Take off your clothes. Who’s Eleven?”

“This—girl. Not anymore, I guess. She’s all grown up now. The government experimented on her in the lab,” he explained, stripping out of his clothes casually, leaving them on a heap on the floor. “I met her after you came to town but she was involved before. She opened The Gate.”

“The Gate?” Billy repeated, letting Steve pluck his shirt off his back and drop it to the floor.

“It keeps our world and the Upside Down separated.”

“This makes no sense,” Billy complained. Steve pushed him back onto the bed with a hand to his chest. Billy went willingly, back hitting the mused sheets. They still smelled like sex. “Nothing makes sense. How’d she open it?”

Steve loomed over him, pale and inked and glorious, dark hair falling into his eyes. Thunder cracked outside in the distance. Billy ignored it. It was familiar territory—the expanse of ink, of moles and freckles and the rasp of chest hair. To get naked and get his hands on Steve, to forget about everything but what lay between them. To strip down with nothing between them.

“She’s powerful,” Steve said, hooking his fingers in the waistband of Billy’s jeans, pulling them down his thighs. “Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s kinda fucked up, though.” He paused to yank off Billy’s briefs. “Kinda like you, actually.”

Billy kicked Steve’s thigh. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“It was a compliment.”

“Didn’t sound like one.”

Steve smiled, crawling on top. Billy’s hands found his hips, fingers gliding over the bloom of red and blue flowers on his waist, the sketch of curved lines down his thigh. They framed his chest, stretched out in a ship swallowed by a monster between his shoulders. They licked up his neck into the gears of a pocket watch surrounded by thorns, along the edge of his jaw into a neatly stamped  _fuck you_  that could only be seen when he threw back his head to swallow a shot.

They stained his skin, some deeper than others, in shapes and patterns Billy had spent what felt like forever trying to memorize with his tongue.

Steve straddled his stomach, hands settled beside Billy’s head against the mattress. Billy petted the skin of his hips, up his sides, the small of his back. “Take it down,” he murmured.

Steve paused, nose brushing the tip of Billy’s. Billy didn’t need to clarify. “It might hurt,” Steve said, soft, running his knuckles along his jaw.

“I can take it.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“A little late for that, ain’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You get to be in my head. I should get to be in yours.”

“That’s—”

“Fair.”

Steve laughed, low and throaty, and pushed hair from Billy’s eyes. “You ask a lot.”

“Your definition of  _a lot_  is different from mine,” Billy murmured, fingertips dancing up Steve’s spine, palm cradling his skull to nudge him forward until their lips met.

It was the barest touch but it warmed Billy down to his bones, a champagne-bubble feeling in his belly. It was a relief, white-hot and sweet, to be able to touch him, for Steve to lean into him until their mouths slotted together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He clicked with Steve, their jagged edges fitting together, snapping into place until he didn’t know where he ended and Steve began.

It was a sudden awareness of something other than himself inside his own head. There was heat and want and the thunder-strike of desire, a hint of desperation that felt like home, the twist of understanding that stuck into his skin like needles. Steve was there, buried deep—only he wasn’t buried in anything. He was just  _there_. He existed inside Billy’s head, roots entwined with his own.

The shrine built to boys who would never love him back crumbled.

Billy clutched at him, mouth slack, overloaded by the overwhelming existence that was Steve Harrington. He tasted the tics in his mind, the itch for a cigarette, the warmth of happiness. The surface thoughts flooded him— _want him, need him, he can’t leave me, please just believe me_ —and he drifted in them.

It was love and need and desire. It was everything Billy had ever dreamed of, packaged in heat and tinged with the bone-deep ache of wanting something so badly you would kill for it. It was everything Billy had felt and been burned by, magnified by a hundred and turned onto himself.

Steve’s head was a thorny jungle of thoughts twisted together, sharp-edged to cut when Billy tried to grasp one.

It startled him to taste his own spit and feel the rasp of his own stubble on Steve’s mouth. Acute awareness took over, sensory overload that melded into double vision for the skin, and for a moment Billy couldn’t remember where he began and Steve ended. For a moment, they were one.

He shook beneath Steve, tremors in his hands where he clutched at Steve’s shoulder. Steve lay on him, weight pressing him into the bed, lips gentle as he pulled away enough for Billy to suck in gasping breaths of air.

Steve touched his face, fingertips stroking hair off his temple. Touch blurred into feeling, the sensation riding the edge of  _too much_. It overwhelmed, dragged him down, blew him away in a flurry of their existences melded together. He felt himself in Steve’s hands, in his head, the swell of tenderness and the strings of concern plucking away.

It might have been a minute or a year—time slipped through his fingers, meaningless, and when he finally came back to himself, a slow awaking to there being a world outside of themselves, Billy realized his hands were shaking.

His head dropped back against the mattress. He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath. “That’s worse than heroin.”

“You’ve never tried heroin,” Steve murmured, burying his face against Billy’s neck, lips light on his skin.

“I can’t say it’s better than acid. That’d be a lie.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

_You love me_ , he thought. It echoed in his head, vibrating through his skull. It was a mirror sound, bouncing through his own, hearing it in Steve’s, being in Steve’s head.

Steve huffed a laugh against his neck.  _You don’t have to think that loudly_.

_I always think like this._

_No, you don’t_.

_How would you know?_

_I’ve been in your head for months_.

“That’s never not going to be weird,” Billy said.

Steve lifted his head. “You get used to it.”

“I doubt it.”

“At least you’re not turned on all the time.” Billy lifted an eyebrow. Steve heaved a sigh, exasperation filling up their heads, and rolled off him, settling on his back. Their arms touched, hips and thighs and the press of Steve’s foot against Billy’s shin. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just always  _on_ , you know? I’m always hearing other people’s bullshit if I’m not being careful.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It sucks.”

“I would’ve gone to college that way.”

“That’s called  _cheating_ , Billy,” he said, but he smiled anyway, mouth twitching and eyes bright.

Billy smiled back. “That’s called  _taking advantage_ , Steve.”

“That’s why you didn’t finish school.”

“You love me.”

_I do_  echoed in Billy’s head. Billy looked at Steve, the ink and the hair and the smattering of moles and freckles across his skin. Rain splattered outside the window again, a steady  _drip-drip-drip_  from the sky.

_I love you_ , Billy thought, because it was safer that way, less real, less like the words were heavy weights in his lungs. He’d said it enough aloud to Steve. Each time he’d turned away, pressed him into the bed, grabbed another beer or swallowed another fry to ignore it.

“I wasn’t ignoring it,” Steve said softly. Billy barely held back a flinch.

“I’ll never get used to that.”

“You do, eventually. It just becomes part of you.”

“You could try not to pry.”

“You think like you’re screaming.”

Billy gave him a sidelong look. “You know what I’m thinking.”

“I know what you’re feeling. That’s worse.”

“You’re the worst romantic I know.”

“I’m the only romantic you know.”

Billy closed his eyes and thought about Hawkins and its green and yellow and orange walls, the way Steve had leaned that girl up against the lockers and kissed the tip of her nose. He thought of the bleachers he’d seen Steve kiss under, the flowers taped the locker on Valentine’s Day.

He saw himself outside the cabin in Braine-l'Alleud, damp with sweat, beard too long, hair pushed impatiently out of his eyes until Steve snapped off his own hair tie and handed it to him. He saw himself scrape it back off his temples, mutter a thanks, and turn back to cutting wood.

He felt Steve’s annoyance with his own hair, the impatient hack-job he’d done with blunt scissors in the tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. He felt his own hands on Steve’s shoulders, snip-snip-snipping away at the strands he’d missed.

“Get out of my head,” he said, smacking his wrist against Steve’s side. “That’s you in love?”

“It was the last tie,” Steve said, the smile tingeing his voice, the joy warming Billy from the inside out. His mouth betrayed him and he smiled back. He bit his tongue. Steve laughed and said, “I can feel that, you know. You can’t hide.”

_You really want to start on who’s been hiding?_

“I’m not a coward.”

“You could have told me.”

“You called me crazy.”

“We’re back at this?”

 “I’m not crazy.”

“Yeah,” Billy said, shoving an elbow beneath himself to prop up. “I can see that.”

_Stop saying it_.

“You’re fucking psychic or some shit, Steve. That’s what makes you fucking crazy.”

Steve looked at him, hard around the edges, white teeth digging into his bottom lip. His eyes searched Billy’s face, looking for something. He wondered if truth had a feeling, if Steve could feel it in his words, in his head, in his heart.

_I can_ , he thought.  _You might change your mind._

Billy laughed, scrubbed a hand over his damp hair and said, “I’ll love you ‘til the day I fucking die. You’re gonna have to leave my ass here if you wanna get rid of me.”

Relief sweeter than the first plane ticket to France shivered through them both. It was part Steve’s, part Billy’s. The rocky cliff that they’d built themselves on shifted and settled. Steve curled toward him and set his cheek on his thigh, stubble pricking his skin. He touched Steve’s temple, cheek and lips, hooking his knuckles beneath his chin and tipping his face up.

_Kiss me_ , Billy thought.

Steve moved, dropping kisses against his hip and ribs, curling his hands around Billy’s shoulders to push him down. They moved ungracefully, hips shifting, legs kicking to find a comfortable position. The ring through Steve’s cock pressed against Billy’s thigh. Billy pulled him close, kissing the tip of Steve’s nose like he’d done to that girl all those years ago, clicking together.

They kissed, slow and sweet, Billy’s fingers tracing the path of Steve’s spine, stroking the skin of his hips, until the flair of want and need blurred with desire, Steve’s dick—maybe his, too, definitely his, too—filling as the want passed between them. It tangled together as easily as their tongues, slick as the spit between them, heavy as the breath they shared.

Words failed him, the cut off  _touch me_  leaving their connection as quickly as it came as Billy dug his fingers into the flesh of his ass and spread his legs, rolling his hips up. They kissed deeper, a blur of need coursing through his head, in Steve’s, inside them both.

It overwhelmed him. A feedback loop of desire pulsed between them. In the connection, between his head and Steve’s, Billy drowned in it. It pulled in his belly and sang along his spines, until he was kissing Steve like a man dying of thirst, sated by nothing but how close he could come to crawling inside him.

He rolled them over, pinning Steve beneath him, thighs and cocks and chest touching. Each contact point blew along his nerves. The needy thrum in their heads drowned out the world. The dirty grind-and-drag he’d grown familiar with wasn’t enough. The ring through Steve’s cock burned a brand to him, catching along foreskin, sliding through slick beading from the tip. A heavy knot of want grew in his belly.

Billy shivered, felt a shudder run through Steve’s spine. The  _more, more, more_  echoed inside his head. Steve gripped his hair, yanked on it until Billy pulled away to gasp at the pain, and forced the thought  _get inside me_  into his head.

_Pushy_ , Billy thought as he choked on a laugh, shoving Steve’s arm away and sitting up. The sheets tangled around his ankle, and he shuffled to the side of the bed awkwardly, leg kicking to brush it off.

Steve laughed and pushed his hair off his forehead. The blue and green ink flexed on his arm. “Jesus  _Christ_.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, not unkindly. He huffed, groping across the side table. An empty glass, a takeout menu from a shitty chain restaurant they’d opted out of—no lube.

“Under the bed,” Steve said.

Billy glanced at him. He was stretched out on the bed, one leg propped up, tattooed hand wrapped around his cock, thumbing over the ring. Entranced, he watched Steve tug at it, roll it over the pad of his thumb, played his fingertips over the cockhead. Blood-flushed red against the paleness of his skin, sticky with precum already, he looked like sin, or an angel, or something so in between there wasn’t a name for it.

Steve grinned, wicked, and spread his legs, bit his lip and arched his hips. He fucked into his hand, a filthy, rhythmic slide of skin-on-skin. Billy swallowed down the saliva on his tongue.

Without the connection, he knew what Steve was thinking. It was written across the pink touch of his tongue to his lip, drawn out in the twist of his wrist, the little hitch in his breath as his hips twitched up.

Billy rolled off the bed, knees hitting the floor hard enough to hurt. He ignored it, pushing the bedskirt to the side and groping beneath until his fingers snagged on sharp plastic. Grabbing the bottle, he scrambled onto the bed, hand fisted in the sheets. He yanked them off the corner in his haste. He ignored that, too.

They touched and Billy broke. They crashed into each other, a cut ripping apart until they poured into each other. He laid his hand flat against Steve’s hip, curled his fingers into the delicate skin and held on until the onslaught of Steve’s mind settled.

He counted back from five and stopped at three, when Steve’s hysterical laugh echoed in his head, followed by  _do you think that actually works_ , and Billy laughed aloud, choked on a startled chuckle, because it was so absurd to be so affected, to feel Steve’s cock twitch and drip precum across his belly, to feel his own jerk in sympathy and want, and the overpowering realization that he didn’t know how it’d been possible to live without this before.

He breathed it in and drank it down, dropping the bottle of lube and gripping Steve’s thighs, situating himself between them. Steve pressed his knees to Billy’s sides, one hand curled loose around his dick, fingers clamped around the base to starve off the orgasm pricking at the back of both their skulls, the other stroking over Billy’s stomach, thighs, hips, moving up to catch his nipple between his knuckles, pinching until the edge of pain, in the way he knew Billy liked it best.

_Stop it_ , he thought.

_Fuck me_.

Billy closed his eyes and swallowed, groping for the bottle of lube. He twisted the cap off with his teeth, spitting it onto the floor. He squeezed too much slick across his fingers. It dripped off his hand.

Uncaring, he tossed the lube to the side, clutching at Steve’s hip to keep him in place and from rutting his cock up against Billy’s belly. His nails bit into Steve’s skin in warning, a growled  _stay_  splintering through their bond.

Steve shivered, full body, fingers flexing on his cock. Billy’s breath stuttered.

Brazen lust spilled from Steve. The flutter of want, the swell of desire for Billy’s hands on his body, bruising, forcing him down and pinning him to the bed or the brick wall in an alley or anywhere Billy couldn’t contain his need to get himself inside Steve. Like the time Billy had tied his hands behind his back, shoved him face-first into the bed and fucked him until he’d sobbed, wrung out on two orgasms when Billy had slipped his fingers in next to his cock and played him to a shuddering third. Like the time Billy had laid his hand across his throat, a threat and a promise, subtle weight against his neck that he hadn’t thrown off and spent the entire time chasing pleasure wanting him to press harder.

White noise blurred out everything, pleasure buzzing in his ears. It throbbed to the beat of his heart and Steve’s mind.

He slicked himself quickly, cock jumping at the touch of his own hand like it was Steve’s, and grabbed Steve’s hips, a frustrated noise growling in his throat when his slippery hand slid off Steve’s skin. He wiped it off on the comforter. Steve pressed his heels into the bed and tilted his pelvis up. Billy’s cock slipped over his skin, pressing in between his cheeks. Impatient, he cupped Steve’s ass cheek, holding him open, exposed, cockhead catching on his hole. Steve clenched against the tip, sucking in a breath.

Tight and hot, just loose enough not to be painful—thick, spearing him open, a hollow ache in his back where he held himself up, the stretch of muscle, the frantic moment the head popped inside and he clenched hard enough it did hurt. The stutter in his chest at the overwhelming heat, the flex of muscle around his cock, the unforgiving thrust that branded him down to his core. The startled noise when he was inside, encircled, possessed.

It swirled together, each sensation blending into the next. Billy surged forward and Steve’s heels hooked at the hollow of his back, the strain stretching between the bond. Falling onto him in a kiss, Billy shoved his arm beneath Steve’s back, an uncomfortable prop to hold him up. Steve clutched at his shoulders, biting his lip until they both tasted iron, scouring lines across Billy’s back in an intimate tattoo.

There were no words between them. Sensation took over, and as Billy pressed Steve’s thighs wider with each thrust, the strain pulling into pain they ignored. They kissed, clutched and scratched, pulling their way deeper into each other.

Pain and pleasure bloomed between them, blocking out the world around them. Time was meaningless. It could have been a moment or a minute or a millennium. Nothing mattered but the connection, the chase, the desperate reach for orgasm feeding each other’s need.

It twisted in his belly, dropping low, tightening in his balls as he pulled Steve into his thrusts, ground against him until Steve let out an animal noise and grabbed a new handful of skin across Billy’s back. Billy groaned, the kiss twisting into nothing more than mouths pressed together as he chased orgasm.

It splintered inside Billy first. White, icy, prickling across every inch of his spine. It swelled and broke, washed over him with all the force of a category five hurricane. It knocked him down, dragged him under and left him soaking and shivering in it.

Halfway through, while he rode the wave back down to sanity, Steve came, cresting across their bond like a brilliant light. The pleasure snapped inside him, twisted viciously from the knot it’d tied itself into. It held him on edge for a moment, shaking in Billy’s arms, and dropped him over the ledge without warning.

Darkness bled into the edges of his mind and eclipsed him.

 

 

 

 

He woke up in his seventeen-year-old body, hair long and hairspray-fried, sitting in his high school Camaro in Hawkins High’s parking lot. It was night. The boy he’d daydreamed about for almost two years sat next to him.

“What the fuck,” Billy said, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

The hot frantic need was gone from his body. Shed like a second skin, there was nothing but lukewarm want, the kind that always stuck like glue inside his mouth when he was next to Steve.

Steve grinned, pushing an ink-free hand into his hair, knocking it off his forehead. “You’re dreaming.”

“What the  _fuck_.”

Steve laughed. His grin was wide and disarming. His hair was long. He was still a creature Billy wouldn’t hesitate to call pretty. “Calm down,” he said, slouching in his seat. A cigarette materialized between his fingers, lit. He offered it to Billy. “You get used to it after a while.”

He gave the cigarette a suspicious look before taking it. He cracked the window out of habit. Steve laughed again.

“Don’t be a fuck,” Billy snapped, and struggled to swallow the smoke into his lungs. It didn’t burn all the way down. It settled there, like air, until he released it into a cloud from his lips.

“It’s just a dream.”

“I was having the best sex of my life a second ago. Forgive me for not taking it well.” He rubbed at his nose with his thumb and hissed in irritation as his hair fell into his eyes. He batted it away. “This is the worst case of blue balls you’ve ever given me.”

“You’re the one who fell asleep.”

“So did you!”

Steve didn’t bother to stifle his laughter. He threw his head back and laughed, bright and open. “Don’t sound so put off by it, then,” he said, breathless as he plucked the cigarette from Billy’s slack fingers.

Billy held back a scowl, glancing down at his crotch expectantly. There was nothing there to suggest he’d just been balls deep in Steve. “Fucking weirdo.”

“C’mon,” Steve said, jamming the cigarette between his lips and opening the car door. “I want to show you something.”

Chafed, he still followed out of the car, glancing at the schools and joined parking lot. It was mid-evening, the sky tinged pink while grey clouds floated by. The breeze didn’t touch his skin. Billy glanced at his hand, turning it over. A gust ruffled the sleeve of his jacket. He didn’t feel it.

“Come on!” Steve called from over the hood of the car, puffing away on the cigarette as he took off toward the middle school. Billy jogged around the car to catch up.

“What is this?” he asked, snatching the cigarette from Steve. It felt like nothing, but it was something to do with his hands. He felt twitchy, like something was wrong in his own skin. Going from orgasm to nothing was more unsettling than he’d ever expected.

“Will—that missing kid, remember? Just before you guys came here,” Steve said, conversationally, like there was nothing wrong with anything going on around them. “The Mind Flayer took him. It’s the Big Bad from the Upside Down and it’s just so…” He trailed off and then shook his head. Billy felt his thoughts scatter and felt him clutch to a safer thought. “We were trying to save him that night with your sister. There was a dead Demo-dog in the freezer and everyone was in danger.”

He smiled, like it was sweet, like that night was something fond. “I just wanted you to fucking leave and you didn’t.”

“You could have said something.”

“You wouldn’t have believed me. You barely believe me now.”

“It’s a lot,” Billy complained, sucking hard on the cigarette. He desperately wished it would burn. It did, suddenly, mid-inhale, and he choked on the smoke so viciously they both stopped. Steve clutched his shoulder, keeping him grounded.

“What the fuck was  _that_?” Billy wheezed, stomping angrily on the cigarette, blinking away the tears swelling in his eyes.

“You’re dreaming,” Steve said, smoothing down Billy’s collar. He pushed hair off his forehead. “You make the rules.” When Billy said nothing, did nothing but stare at Steve like he’d grown a third eye, he sighed and patted his shoulder. “You get used to that, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared a dream with someone.”

Billy followed, dumbly, after Steve, as they walked around the school. “Tell me more,” he said finally. “How did you get him back?”

He shook his head again. “I’ll tell you some other time. That’s not what I want to show you.”

Billy opened his mouth to complain and then stopped, lips pressed into a thin line as he took note of what was in front of him. Steve came to a slow stop, shoved his hands in his back pockets and nodded toward the hole in front of them.

“That’s where it happened,” he said, and Billy stared at the hole. At least eight-by-eight, it looked as if something had punched out a perfect circle in the Earth. He took a step forward and peeked over the edge. The absence of existence looked back at him.

He stumbled back, sucked in a breath and muttered, “What the fuck, Steve.”

“It didn’t look like this before,” Steve explained, and Billy was too blistered by the casualty of his words to be annoyed. “There was this miasma shit coming out of the ground. A bunch of kids got sick before we figured out what it was.”

“What was it?”

Steve glanced at the hole, at the empty blackness that seemed to echo back at them. “We thought the Mind Flayer was the worst thing we’d seen. It wasn’t. The Upside Down…” Trailing off again, he sighed and closed his eyes. Billy reached for his hand, fingers landing on Steve’s bare wrist. “It’s alive. It’s a  _thing_  or a being or something. It wanted Jane and it got her.”

Quiet stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. “Then what?” Billy prompted, finally, squeezing Steve’s wrist.

“We ate it.”

“What?”

“We ate it,” Steve repeated, shrugging, distant even as he inspected the hole in the ground. “The government was doing experiments with it. Stupid shit, too, because I don’t know why they’d want to eat that shit in the first place. But they did and Sam—he was one of the scientist guys—he told us to eat it. Then we’d be part of it and we could see it. So we did.”

“And now you’re psychic.”

“Mostly.”

“And you wanted me to see  _this_ ,” he said, dropping Steve’s hand and flinging his hand out over the hole, “because…?”

“I want you to go back to Hawkins with me.”

Billy stopped, mouth gone slack, eyebrows raising in surprise. It took a moment for him to find his tongue. “No.”

“Billy—”

“Nope.”

“I’m not asking you to—”

“Steve—”

“Billy, let me finish—”

“No—”

“I just want you to believe me!” Steve said, sharp, loud. It seemed to echo forever between them. He gestured to the hole. “There’s a big fucking circle of rock where nothing grows back in Hawkins. I want you to see it. I want you to see the old lab, and meet Jane, and I want you to see your fucking sister and talk to Hopper and maybe— _just maybe_ —you’ll really believe me.”

Billy stared. Dumbfounded, he stared, searching for a shred of sanity in anything Steve said. When he found none, he closed his eyes and counted back from ten.

There was a world he’d lived in before Amsterdam. Steve was nothing more than a fleeting thought. Steve Harrington wasn’t the one who got away. He was the one who never was, who had been so far out of Billy’s league that he’d never been a possibility.

He imagined that world. He imagined living in it.

He imagined going home to his uncle and his grandparents. He imagined sitting on a deck, basking in the sunlight, old and alone and knowing that Steve Harrington would always be the one who got away.

“You have to meet my grandparents,” Billy said, gruff, opening his eyes to see Steve peering into his face with the intensity of a thousand suns. He sighed, heavy. “Before we go back. As my boyfriend,” he added, “because I want them to know you like that.”

They stared at each other, frozen, until Steve closed his eyes and smiled, a wobbly twitch of his lips that made Billy want to kiss him, so he did. He cupped the back of his head, threaded his fingers in his hair, and kissed him like they were in love, because they were and he could.

“Okay,” Steve said, soft, and kissed him again, arms wrapping around Billy’s shoulders to pull him close.

_Okay_.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on Tumblr @ [celoica](https://celoica.tumblr.com).


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